Another Talented Young American Races to Victory in Motocross

CARLSBAD —  For the fifth time in six years, one of America’s Whiz Kid motocrossers frustrated Europe’s best riders at their own game.

This time it was slender David Bailey, 24, of Axton, Va., who rode his factory-backed Honda to victory in two 45-minute 500cc motos to win the 13th annual Nissan U.S. Grand Prix of Motocross on a hot and dusty Sunday at Carlsbad Raceway.

This was Round 8 in the 12-event world championship series, but the only one in which most American riders compete.

In the technical sense of the word, David Thorpe of England and Georges Jobe of Belgium finished second and third overall, but to most of the estimated 25,000 spectators, Bailey’s only competition was defending champion Broc Glover of El Cajon.

Glover, who fell at the start of the first moto and got up to charge from about 20th to finish second, ended up not counting at all when he was disqualified for riding in the wrong direction.

On one of the three times he fell in the second moto, Glover rode his Yamaha down hill--against the grain of the race--to get it started. After he finished fourth, his position was protested by European Honda officials, and the protest was upheld by FIM judges.

“I can’t remember the last time I fell three times in one moto,” Glover said. “In fact, I can’t even remember going down twice. I don’t think I did anything wrong but the disqualification doesn’t mean anything. In a race like this, only one position counts, and if I couldn’t win, it doesn’t matter where I finished.”

With Glover not counting, this moved two Honda riders from Belgium, Eric Geboers and world champion Andre Malherbe, up to fourth and fifth.

Bailey’s domination in the second moto, once Glover was out of contention, was complete. Glover was leading when he went down the first time after hitting a slick spot in Rattlenskake Gulch. He fell again a lap later when he hit a rock on the course. This left Bailey with a 28 second lead over Thorpe and the moto was barely half over.

When Bailey crossed the finish line on the 1.3-mile hillside course, he had extended his margin to 44 seconds. He won the opening moto by 14 seconds over Glover and the nearest European, Jobe, was 15 seconds farther back.

“I was not concerned when Broc (Glover) took the lead (in the second moto), at least not at that point,” Bailey said. “My strategy was to keep pressure on and stay within five seconds of him until the finish was in sight. I figured I had an advantage because I was going to make him ride hard, and he had ridden a lot harder than I did in the first moto when he had to come from behind.

“I could see he was riding on the border line and the course was slippery, much worse than I have ever seen it.”

Glover was not so charitable about the course condition.

“The track was shabbily prepared,” he said. “There was no excuse for having a rock like I hit in the middle of the line.”

It was also so dusty that riders and spectators alike often had difficulty in seeing. Track conditions deteriorated during the first moto, and the promoters had no water truck available to soak it down.

The first moto was quite a contrast from the runaway second one as Geboers, Ron Lechien of El Cajon, Thorpe and Jobe all led before Bailey took command on the long downhill shortly after the midway point.

Lechien put on a one-lap show when he moved from fifth to first on the first lap--only to crash the second time around.

“I got out of control coming down the downhill and never got back in shape before I hit the second downhill,” Lechien said before packing up and heading home with a bruised left shoulder. “I went down hard.”

Meanwhile, Glover was moving through the hard-riding pack, picking up a rider or two on every lap. He had dropped back when he fell on the 180 degree left-hander that follows a 100-yard drag race off the starting line.

“I was right behind Geboers (who led at the first turn) and when I gassed it, I felt the bike going away from me. The corner was like glass,” Glover said.

Eric Fisher, 18, the latest in a seemingly endless supply of motocross talent from the San Diego area, was a surprising fifth in the first moto on his own stock Honda. The youngster from Santee, who was riding in his first 45-minute motos, was running fourth in the second moto when his chain broke.

This was the first time a rider had won both motos in the U.S. Grand Prix since Marty Moates, a privateer from San Diego, first broke the European domination of this race in 1980. Before that the Europeans had won seven in a row.

Since Moates proved an American could beat the Europeans, the winners have been Chuck Sun of Sherwood, Ore.; Danny (Magoo) Chandler of Foresthill, Calif.; Hakan Carlqvist of Sweden and Glover. Only a unusual international ruling prevented Glover from winning in 1983 when officials used elapsed time instead of best second moto finish to break a tie. Carlqvist’s time for the two motos was three seconds less than Glover’s.

Chandler, riding with a bruised shoulder that kept him out of the last two Grand Prix in Sweden and Holland, failed to finish either moto. Carlqvist, who parlayed his 1983 win to the world championship, was a late scratch because of an aggravated hand injury.

Bailey, whose father, Gary, is a motocross school instructor, credited training near his home in Virginia for his win on a 100 degree day.

“I have been concentrating on this race for several months,” Bailey said. “The temperature there has been between 92 and 96 for about a month, and the humidity was unbelievable. When I could ride 45 minutes in that heat, I knew I wouldn’t be bothered by the heat at Carlsbad.”

In a pair of 250cc support motos for American riders, Johnny O’Mara of Simi Valley, Rick Johnson of El Cajon and Larry Brooks of Pasadena finished 1-2-3 in both.